An annual analysis by the N.C. Department of Transportation suggests that the Triangle’s roads may be a bit safer than those in the rest of the state.

In a ranking of crash-prone cities across North Carolina, no Triangle city placed higher than 14th.

Meanwhile, Charlotte and Greensboro placed in the top 10. Two Charlotte suburbs were also ranked higher than any city in the Triangle.

Click through the slideshow on the right to see exactly how it all shook out.

The analysis included 83 North Carolina municipalities with populations of at least 10,000. DOT calculated crashes per capita for each city and also considered the crashes’ severity in terms of injuries, fatalities and property damage, according to Brad Robinson, an engineer in DOT’s safety unit. Some of these data are in the slides. Note that "non-fatal crashes" refers to crashes that involved injuries but no fatalities, while the total number also includes crashes without any injuries at all.

Robinson produces the list largely for other DOT safety engineers, he said. It’s not official in the sense that they directly base decisions on it; rather, it’s a sort of heads-up for them to look for safety factors on specific roads in cities with high crash rankings, he said.

Insurance companies use similar data in determining what drivers pay in premiums. It's one factor among many, says Liz Stelzer, a spokeswoman for Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co.

David Harkey, who directs UNC’s Highway Safety Research Center in Chapel Hill, has a few further caveats about the NCDOT's ranking. First and foremost, he cautions against comparing cities of different sizes.

He urges special cautions against putting too much stock in the cities’ specific rankings in one year. A small city’s ranking, particular, may be skewed by a couple of large fatal accidents that happen to occur in the same calendar year.

Both Robinson and Harkey note that DOT’s per capita data reflect cities’ numbers of residents, rather than the number of people who use their roads. In other words, cities with large influxes of commuters, such as Charlotte, are probably somewhat safer than DOT’s ranking would indicate.

A city’s particular mix of roads is important, too, Harkey says. The rate of crashes on rural secondary roads is five times as high as that of interstate highways, once the respective traffic volumes are considered. The city at the top of DOT’s list may reflect that, both in terms of its rural surroundings and in terms of its terrain.